Ben Berman

“Ben Berman’s wonderful first book is a masterful study in the power and limits of empathy, of respect for difference in tension with the urgent need for common ground. Beyond his formal and stylistic range, linguistic flexibility, eye for detail, irrepressible wit and powerful feeling, what’s most impressive about this terrific book is Berman’s inclusive generous spirit, the deadly serious imaginative play he exercises in every line of every poem. This is a book to cherish.” —Alan Shapiro

“Ben Berman’s marvelous first book chronicles in startling and unforgettable poems his sojourn in Zimbabwe and his immersion in a culture that both embraces and exiles him, attracts and reproaches, changing him forever. Using a variety of poetic approaches—rhymed couplets, prose paragraphs, near-sonnets, free verse—he gives us a multi-tonal description of landscapes that are as elusive as they are inviting, as unfamiliar to most of us as they are intuitively recognizable. This is a compelling poetry of “strange borderlands where distance and intimacy collide.” —Gregory Djanikian

“Ben Berman’s lyric poems set in Zimbabwe dig deep into the casual and the casualty of daily life:  the hammer striking the sheep’s head, the sustenance that follows; disciplinary beatings students, giggling and protesting, could count and count on to fade.  Unassuming but wise, compassionate yet wildly, unpredictably funny at times, Berman delivers to us escalating hardships that somehow elevated us toward the sacred; the pathetic harvest and sweetness that comes from the least likely of places. These least likely of places is where Berman thrives, calling on closely observed facts to chronicle the perimeters of tenderness and cruelty. I believe every word in this collection. This is an unforgettable debut by a powerful and humble voice.”—Dzvinia Orlowsky

“In Ben Berman’s poems there is often a subliminal dialogue going on, one that shows this poet caught in the dynamic processes of negotiating difference. These poems interweave experiences with one another; they create overlays of dialogue and interchange; they show the mind stretching to gather unto itself different ways of being. Sometimes the overlays are temporal, sometimes emotional or intellectual. But whether it be in Berman’s intense lyrical meditations about Zimbabwe or in his equally intense prose poems about the psychological aftermath of the Peace Corps, there is inevitably a flickering of new meaning, an insight, an ampler understanding. Even if the insight is only partial and ephemeral, it nonetheless has an authenticity because it has arisen from the frictions and abrasions of varying cultural paradigms. These are insights we can trust, and as a result we begin to feel just a bit more at home in that strange borderland where, as Ben Berman writes, “distance and intimacy collide.” —Fred Marchant

“Reflective in nature, these poems use form–from slant-rhyming couplets to prose poems–to limn the tensions of readjustment, and mine memory for stories that keep the author rooted to a place that will forever and never be his. Throughout the collection, Berman’s images sear the brain with their often-perplexing otherness, while his openness to new cultures and peoples help readers understand how beautiful the world’s strangeness can be. This is a must-have book for readers of poetry.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“In this collection of poems inspired by his experiences in Zimbabwe as a Peace Corps volunteer, Ben Berman manages to capture the ephemeral quality of cultural collisions. Sometimes humorous, sometimes soul wrenching, these poems explore the edges of difference with a wry and tender voice.” —World Literature Today

“Ben Berman’s riveting first poetry collection, Strange Borderlands… poignantly conveys an insistent and nettlesome remembering, a half-wild entertaining of meaning, along with an unsettled understanding that there might not be any.”  —Peace Corps Writers

“What I admire most about these poems, beyond their intense imagery and the tensions constructed between dark and light, is the clear love and respect this poet demonstrates for his subject matter. There is a human scale to each poem that helps the reader walk the trails of this landscape however unfamiliar they may have been until that moment.” —Ragazine

“Laughter is everywhere in the people and in the humor unearthed even from the misery many of these poems describe–it becomes a language of its own…The misjudgments and gaffes that result in the constant battering of Berman in Zimbabwe end up creating a surety, a line of communication, a bulwark against all that threatened to collapse.” —Salamander Magazine